


The Tyler Conspiracy

by chelseagirl



Category: Doctor Who, Life on Mars (UK), Wonderfalls
Genre: Crack Crossover, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/pseuds/chelseagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Tyler (Life on Mars), Rose Tyler (Doctor Who), and Jaye Tyler (Wonderfalls) walk into a bar . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tyler Conspiracy

I.

The thing about living thirty-three years in your own past is that you tend not to get a lot of post, or so Sam Tyler had found. With most of his friends and loved ones living in 2006, he suspected that holiday greetings directed to Sam Tyler, Some Crap Bedsit in Manchester, 1973, were going to be few and far between.

In fact, other than circulars, bills, and the odd departmental mailing, the only thing Sam had received in the post since his arrival had been a postcard from Annie on holiday, and a get-well card theoretically from Gene, but clearly the handiwork (and handwriting) of his missus.

So when the thick cream-coloured envelope arrived, with its hand-calligraphed address, Sam took notice. Nobody in the department was getting married, so far as he knew, and though his subconscious (or his coma, or whatever it was) had the tendency to talk to him through the television, it hadn’t actually sent him a letter before. He tore it open, and slid out an invitation card, engraved and on the same thick cream paper.

Tyler family reunion, it said, with a time, date, and address following. No telephone number, no request for R.S.V.P., nothing. Perhaps it was a mistake, taken from the city directory. Perhaps it was some kind of trick. Could his father, his twenty-nine year old father who thought Sam was just some random copper who was an oddly receptive audience for all his lies, be looking for some sort of revenge? But that seemed unlikely; it was a lot more probable there’d just been a mistake.

Sam tossed the invitation down on the table with all the bills and circulars that had piled up there, and didn’t think about it again.

## 

Not until the day mentioned on the invitation itself, a Saturday. He woke up feeling a little foggy-headed from the previous evening at the Railway Arms. Work-related socializing was a lot more hazardous to the health here in 1973. Not necessarily more enjoyable, he thought, as an image of Maya came unbidden to him, Maya gasping in passion, back at the beginning when things were uncomplicated, and good. Somehow ending the evening with Ray Carling swinging a punch at him before they all staggered home wasn’t quite as satisfying, though the couple odd quid he’d won at cards would come in handy.

Water! For a moment, rehydration was all he could think about. He longed for a tall cold bottle of Evian; he’d left three or four of them chilling in the refrigerator of his 2006 flat. He remembered the stainless steel appliances with a pang, and cooking there with Maya, and tried not to remember the dead man he’d seen on that same spot in 1973. He’d been thinking about upgrading the range, but compared to the small, inconvenient stove and non-existent counters in his 1973 digs, that kitchen was luxury unimaginable. But as he pulled the covers down – and he really had to stop falling asleep fully dressed – he caught sight of something falling to the floor. 

He looked down – it was a pale square of cardboard, what was it? Oh, the invitation card. He must have picked it up last night, before he’d fallen asleep. Funny that he wouldn’t have remembered – sure, he’d been a bit pissed, but not to the point of not remembering things. The satisfying way he’d ducked Ray’s punch and Ray’d stumbled forward into the wall. The trip home – every unsteady step of it, after he’d refused to let Gene give him a lift, and earnestly entreated him to call a taxi, or possibly the Missus, to come get him.

“And what would she come fetch me in, then? D’you think we’re millionaires, Tyler? Two cars in the family? Anyway, I’m perfectly fine to drive.”

Tyler Family Reunion, September 14, 2 p.m., The Oaks.

The Oaks was a fancy place outside of the city limits. Sam glanced at the clock. If he was going to make it there on time, he’d best get a move on.

Wait. He hadn’t planned on going. And it could still be a trap.

The problem with being a detective was that every little unexplained thing became a challenge. 

Maybe he should phone for backup. He could get Annie to pose as his date.

He could get Annie to be his date. He wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for dating a figment of his comatose imagination, but Annie seemed real enough. Certainly if she was a figment she’d behave more the way he wanted her to, wouldn’t she? He thought about her soft hair and her . . . Sam shook his head, to rid himself of the image, just for now while he’d got this strange reunion thing to think about. Shaking his head was clearly a mistake in his present condition. He reached for the aspirin and tried to remember how long exactly it was until Resolve would be invented. 

##

He arrived at the Oaks half an hour late. There were weddings and parties going on in several halls, but the signs for the Tyler Family Reunion directed him to the Imperial Room, at the back. Making his way between young girls in pink bridesmaid’s dresses and elderly gents in dinner jackets, he turned a corner and found himself alone, with a long, dim corridor ahead of him.

At the end of the corridor was a large banquet hall. There was a buffet set out, still steaming hot, but nobody tending it, and seated at the bar was the room’s only other occupant.

“Hullo!” she said, with a strong London accent. “I’m Rose Tyler. I was beginning to wonder if anyone else was going to turn up.” 

Sam crossed the room and shook the hand she’d extended. “Sam Tyler.” He sat himself at the bar next to her. Drinks had been poured, so he helped himself to a glass of Scotch.

The girl was young, twenty or thereabouts, with long straight bottle-blonde hair and large hoop earrings. Sam observed her hooded top and flared black trousers without much interest, but as his glance reached her feet, he frowned. She was wearing high tech trainers of a type that didn’t exist in 1973. 

“Rose,” he said, hesitantly. “I’m going to ask a question that’s going to sound a little . . . peculiar.” He took a deep breath. “What year are you from?”

Rose looked at him oddly, but not as though he was insane. “You’re from up North, in’t ya? Just like the Doc . . . a friend of mine . . . used to be. I’ll answer that, if you tell me who the Prime Minister is . . . er, President?”

“Prime Minister of Great Britain, President of the United States?”

Rose gave a sudden exhalation. “Not President of Britain? Could it be? Have I got back to the right universe?”

“Universe?” asked Sam. “Er, I have a question of my own. Those trainers don’t look like you bought them in 1973 – they’re way too high tech.”

“1973? Of course not. I bought these,” she thought a moment, “last year. 2006. Why did you ask?”

Sam broke into a smile. “2006? I know this is going to sound crazy, although possibly not to a girl who talks about multiple universes, but I’m from the year 2006, currently living in 1973.”

Rose’s excitement was apparent. “It actually doesn’t. Did you come with the Doctor?”

“The . . . no. Although I might be in a coma, so there are certainly doctors involved. I was hit by a car, and I woke up . . .”

“Not the TARDIS?”

“Tar . . . wait! You’re having me on. The TARDIS, like on Doctor Who?”

“Doctor Who? I mean, there’s the Doctor and . . .”

“And he travels in time and space, in a blue police box called the TARDIS, and he brings humans along with him, but he’s an alien who can change appearance whenever the actor gets fed up with the role.”

“The Doctor isn’t a television programme, he’s a person.”

“But I grew up watching Doctor Who. They brought it back last year, too, but I never got the chance to watch . . .”

Rose Tyler’s face grew sad. “Not the right universe then. A universe where the Doctor is fictional.” She quickly swallowed the contents of her wine glass, and reached for another.

Then she brightened. “On telly, did he travel with a blonde girl, like me, Rose Tyler?”

“Not in the old ones. The series stopped, back, I think it was the end of the eighties. Could have done in the new ones.”

“What about Sarah Jane Smith?”

“Sarah Jane Smith, absolutely. She was one of my favourites – I was just young, but I had such a crush on her. I thought she was the only woman in the world prettier than my mum, as I recall.”

Rose smiled. “One of the Doctor’s favourites, too. She’s real – I’ve met her.”

They looked at each other with slightly narrowed eyes, and clinked glasses. There was really nothing else to do. “Cheers.

“Cheers.” And each took a big swallow.

“So either I’m fictional and you’re in a coma . . .”

“Or something even stranger is happening, possibly related to travel between time and dimensions.”

“You’re a quick one, all right. But the real question is, are we actually related?”

At that moment, the door opened.

##

On the other side was a slim girl of about Rose’s age, with long brown hair. She was wearing a miniskirt with woolly tights, low-heeled boots, and a high-necked jumper. Sam was admittedly not an expert on women’s clothes; they didn’t scream 1973, but neither would they look too outlandish on the streets there. “Hey,” she said, in a distinctly American accent. “Sorry I’m late. . . . Kinda dead in here, isn’t it?” She looked around the room. “Aren’t my folks here?”

“Sorry,” said Rose. “Just us chickens. I’m Rose Tyler.”

“And I’m Sam Tyler.”

“Well, then I must be in the right place. Jaye Tyler.” The new girl looked at her watch.  
“They’re always on time. I’m the one who’s always late. Karen and Darrin Tyler? Or my sister, Sharon? Brother Aaron?”

“Ouch,” said Sam.

“I know,” said Jaye. “I got lucky. I’m the youngest and they ran out. Not that I’m complaining or anything, but I don’t think they were trying hard enough.” She peered around the room in a peculiar fashion. “Of course, it was kinda weird that they never mentioned it. Usually they’re all about the planning, and I’m all about the avoiding.”

“Want a drink?” Sam offered.

“Absolutely!” Jaye plopped down at the bar, still peering around her from time to time. “So, you’re both English.”

“And you’re American,” said Rose, her polite smile slightly strained.

“Well, I mean, obviously Tyler’s not, like, an Italian name or anything, it’s just funny to have two English distant relations show up at a party in Niagara Falls.”

“Niagara . . . Falls?” Sam and Rose spoke almost in unison.

“Like with the barrel?” Rose continued.

“The Oaks is just outside of Manchester.”

“Just outside of London, you mean!”

“Umm . . .”

Sam laughed, awkwardly. DI Tyler was on the case. “So,” he said, “to reiterate. Rose Tyler, of London in the year 2007, possibly a different universe where television programmes from my youth are real, enters a banquet hall outside of London. She’s a time traveler and dimension hopper. Half an hour later, DI Sam Tyler, Manchester police, enters a banquet hall of the same name outside of Manchester, in the year 1973, and encounters Rose. He’s originally from the year 2006, and thus either a time traveler or in a coma.”

Jaye started to speak, but Sam held up his hand to silence her, and continued. “Fifteen minutes after that, Jaye Tyler enters a banquet hall of the same name outside of Niagara Falls, way across the Atlantic Ocean, and encounters Rose and Sam.”

“Although,” Rose pointed out helpfully, “apart from being American there’s nothing peculiar about her that we can tell.”

Jaye had turned white. “I’m just a year off, by the way. 2005. And . . . things with faces kind of talk to me.” There was a slight whine to her tone of voice, though it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

“Things with faces? Like . . . people?” Sam asked.

“Great, we’ve got a real crazy,” sighed Rose.

“Wax lions, brass monkeys, stuffed animals, images on people’s t-shirts. They tell me to do things. To help people.” Jaye looked kind of panicked. “Which . . . okay, not really in character but, I mean, it’s not like they’re telling me to, like, assassinate the President or anything.” 

“The President of the United States?” asked Rose.

“No, the president of my senior class in high school. Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t have been a bad idea . . . If you’d ever met her, you’d understand.”

“I mean, not the President of Britain?”

“Okay, I realize you’re English and I’m not, so I might be missing something, but last time I checked you guys had a Prime Minister.”

“Right universe,” said Rose.

Jaye rolled her eyes. “And I’m supposed to be crazy?”

“Long, complicated story,” said Sam. “Let me get you another drink.”

Jaye’s story, peculiar as it was, explained why she’d been peering around the room. Helpfully, Sam pointed out a few carved animal heads in the elaborate mirror frame behind the bar. 

Jaye nodded. “They don’t always talk to me. Just when there’s something they want me to do. Just when there’s something in my life they could mess up for me.”

“Well if they decide to tell you something about why we’re all here . . . or whether we’re all actually related . . . let us know,” said Rose, looking a bit impatient.

Sam helped the women and himself to another drink. 

They compared family trees, but couldn’t find a common root, other than the not-unusual surname Tyler.

They compared stories, and while each was a bit suspicious of the others, the eventual conclusion was that something strange, but genuine, had happened to each of the three of them. 

“So, you see,” said Rose, “the Pete in the alternate universe isn’t really my dad, but he and my mum fell in love anyway, since her Pete and his Jackie were both dead, and I can’t quite figure out if Sophie is my full sister or my half sister, but she’s absolutely adorable. And now Mickey wants us to get back together, get married and have a baby, too, but I’m definitely not ready for that. Anyway, I’m still not over the Doctor.”

Sam shook his head. “I still can’t get over the notion of Doctor Who as a . . . cute boy. Like . . . David Cassidy or something.” He’d finally gone native to 1973.

“David . . . oh, that guy? Well, not a boy. I mean, he’s nine hundred years old. But the second him I knew, especially, was pretty darn cute.” She grinned. “Mind you, the first him was dead sexy, too, and this whole Northern accent thing, I completely get now.”

“And I thought my life was complicated,” said Jaye. “Clearly being ordered around by inanimate objects and falling in love with a guy whose wife cheated on him on with the bellboy on the honeymoon is just kinda ordinary.”

They looked at each other and melted into slightly drunken giggles (or, in Sam’s case, a manly guffaw). 

Sam rose to his feet. “I’ve got to find the loo,” and crossed the room to the door, which he opened on to . . . 

Nothing.

Just then, Jaye seemed to hear something speak, something the others couldn’t.

 

II.

 

_Take him home._

“What?” Rose asked.

“Take him home,” Jaye mumbled. “That’s what it said.”

“One of your voices?”

Jaye pointed at the carved stag head at the top of the mirror.

“Not very specific, is it?”

An audible sigh. “That would make things too easy. They never make things easy.”

Sam closed the door, and turned to the girls. “The thing is, take me home exactly where? Or rather, exactly when?”

“Your time or mine?” Jaye asked.

Sam opened the door again, and outside was the hallway. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

##

Gene Hunt was not having a good day, and this only made it worse. “DI Tyler’s done WHAT???” He slammed his coffee cup down for emphasis. “Does this look like a social club?”

He strode out of his office, trailed by a nervous Chris. Why was it that Ray always won the coin tosses?

Sitting at D.I. Sam Tyler’s desk were two women, one in his desk chair and the other perched on the desk top; they were young, attractive, and most definitely not members of the Manchester Police Force. 

“Hope you don’t mind,” said the blonde, with a cheeky grin. “Cousin Sam thought we might stay out of trouble here.” Definitely from the other side of the Watford Gap, Gene noted. Ray Carling and some of the other officers were looking at them with open admiration.

“His exact words were, ‘Touch anything and the guv will suggest the lockup is safer.” The brunette was American. Chris had never actually met an American before, but he assumed they sounded the same in real life as they did on the telly. He looked at her more closely, as though she were a species of exotic wildlife.

“Jaye Tyler,” she went on, “and this is Rose Tyler.”

“Sam’s cousins. Jaye’s traveling around Europe this summer, so she’s been staying with me and mum in London.”

“And I hadn’t seen cousin Sam since I was—“ Jaye indicated an improbably low height, “so we came up to spend the week with him.”

“Well, you can’t stay here. All kinds of important police business going on.” He turned to Chris. “Go get WPC Cartwright to take charge of these two until Sam gets back.”

Great, thought Gene. A string of young girls getting murdered all over Manchester, and this is when Tyler decides to have his female relatives for a visit. 

##

The bloke with the ‘tache wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Ray, but Jaye and I were planning to swap photo albums with cousin Sam tonight; it’ll be dead boring and I wouldn’t want to inflict it on anyone else.”

He continued to murmur something about dancing and the pub.

“Also, my boyfriend? He’s the jealous type.”

“Mine, too,” said Jaye, crossing her arms and trying to imagine Eric punching this rather solid man. “Plus I have this strange allergy to mustaches.”

Ray stroked his, proudly. “Pity, that.”

The younger policeman, the one with the puppydog eyes, had returned, and with him was a uniformed woman, only a few years older than Rose and Jaye. Her hair screamed 1973, but somehow it suited her.

“This is WPC Cartwright,” said the puppydog. “She’ll take you two down to the canteen to wait for DI Tyler.”

Cartwright had a friendly smile, but there was wariness in her eyes. “This way, girls,” she said cheerily. “I’m Annie, by the way.”

One out of earshot of the others, she said, “So you’re Sam’s relatives, are you? Because he’s kind of let on that he didn’t . . .” Clearly she was struggling to say something tactfully. “Umm, have too much family hereabouts.”

“We’re kind of . . . scattered all over,” said Rose.

“So he’s not . . . that is, he really does come from . . .”

“He hasn’t told you?”

Annie Cartwright looked at them solemnly. “The future?”

Rose and Jaye exchanged glances. “That.”

“Really?”

“Well, umm, we can’t really talk about it,” said Jaye.

“Disrupting the space-time continuum and all that,” Rose jumped in, proud of what she’d learned on her travels with the Doctor. 

“But he’s not crazy,” Jaye assured her. “Not in the slightest.”

Cartwright looked pensive. “If you . . . say so.” 

Rose followed her glance and realized that Jaye was staring raptly at the carved lion on the city seal they’d just walked past. “A cup of tea would go lovely just now.”

They reached the canteen and seated themselves, and WPC Cartwright excused herself to get their refreshments. “What?” Rose whispered.

“What what?” Jaye returned.

“What did the lion say?”

Jaye sighed. “You could tell?”

“You looked at it like it was Moses come down from the mountain. It was pretty obvious.”

“Take him home, just like at the restaurant. Only now I’m not so sure it’s Sam they meant.”

Cartwright returned, laden with steaming mugs of tea and an assortment of biscuits. “I’m glad to hear that Sam’s . . . all right. He’s . . .” she stopped herself.

She doesn’t want Sam to be crazy, but she doesn’t want him to be from the future, either. She wants him to stay, Rose realized. Poor thing. If anyone understands what it’s like to care about a time traveler, that’d be me.

They were on their third round of tea, and had long since given up any pretence at nibbling on the plate of biscuits in front of them, when Sam joined them. He was rubbing one arm.

“Guv in one his moods?” asked Annie.

“Guv’s not best pleased I brought my relatives to work. Something about a serial killer on the loose and young women not being safe. Why don’t I remember this?”

Annie looked a bit uncomfortable, her open, cheerful expression becoming shadowed. “Well . . .”

“He was afraid I’d launch some kind of a big crusade?”

“Something like that. Anyway, the first one was when you were still in Hyde, the second one was when you were in hospital a few months back, and the third one . . . remember that girl who was found in the canal the other day?”

“The one with her throat cut and her . . .” Sam caught himself, looking at Rose and Jaye. “Spreads them out, some, then?”

Annie nodded. “We didn’t realize they were connected, not ‘til this last one.”

“So, what can we do to help?” asked Rose.

Sam and Annie exchanged horrified glances. “Nothing. This is police business.”

Rose leveled her gaze at Sam. “We’re here for a reason; you know that. This is probably it.”

“Bring him home,” said Jaye, softly.

III.

The morgue wasn’t exactly what Rose and Jaye had expected it to be. Neither had Sam been tremendously helpful.

“It’s police business and far too dangerous for the two of you,” he’d insisted.

“So why do you think we’re here then?” asked Rose.

“Well, I’d hoped you were here to help me get back to the 21st century. What I wasn’t planning on was bringing either of you back there in pieces.”

So clearly they were on their own.

“I’ve never investigated a murder before,” Jaye whispered. “My voices are usually about . . . you know, getting people together, helping priests find their long lost children, advising one of the Native tribes to open a casino. Everyday kinds of things.”

“I’ve seen some horrible things in my travels. Anyway, we need to search the body for clues.”

Jaye stepped back. “Be my guest – it’s all yours. But, er, won’t the forensic pathologist have done that already? You know, like they do on CSI?”

“Sam said there’s just a regular coroner.”

“Oh. Right. 1973. Bad fashions, worse food, and cops like a Starsky and Hutch rerun.”

The morgue was as lacking in high-tech devices as the rest of 1973. The girls found the sliding drawers at the far end, easily enough. “But how do we tell which one is our victim?” whispered Jaye.

“I’ve actually never done this before either,” Rose whispered back. “It should be a young girl, about our age, with her throat cut and . . . some mutilation. Something Sam didn’t want us to hear about.”

Jaye had slid out a drawer and was starting at a particular corpse. “Like this?” She looked slightly green.

Rose gulped. “Uh, yeah, like that.”

The body was that of a dark-haired woman in her late teens or early twenties. Her throat was slit, her nose was cut off, and her eyes were removed.

“Maybe some kind of ritual killing? Or like the killer feels like the eyes house the soul? Or capture his image, or something?”

“And the nose?”

“Uh, houses his scent? I dunno. I’m basing this on a bunch of serial killer movies I watched on DVD last winter. Winters get really boring in Niagara Falls.”

Rose frowned. “So how do you think this might connect to the whole ‘bring him home’ thing?”

“No idea, but--” Jaye began, and then abruptly stopped. It was as if someone had suddenly flipped a switch that turned her from full color into black-and-white – she looked utterly drained.

“Jaye? You all right? What’s happening?”

Jaye’s eyes looked huge. “Rose?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Remember how I said anything with a face . . . could talk to me?”

Rose looked at her in horror.

“The body?”

“Something about the canal. A warehouse.”

“Isn’t that a bit less cryptic than the messages you usually get?”

Jaye nodded. “There is nothing about this that is like the messages I usually get. Shall we?”

##

Rose and Jaye found their way to the canal, aided by a set of directions obtained by an exceptionally weak excuse (one had to worry about D.C. Puppydog and his gullibility, one really did). 

“So we’re here,” said Rose, expectantly.

Jaye looked around. “Umm . . . umm . . .”

“Awaiting further orders?”

“Looking for something with a face.”

“Will I do?” 

The girls jumped at the words. 

“Over here . . .”

The man was tall and unusually thin, almost cadaverous, dressed in nondescript clothing that had seen better days. Thin, colorless hair was plastered down closely over his skull. He had watery pale grey eyes and he blinked a great deal while he talked to them. “I don’t have much time; he’ll wake up soon. You’d best be careful; he’s the one who’s been killing the girls.”

“Who’s he?”

The thin man pointed vaguely at himself. “He’s called Edward Pennington. He used to be an accountant. Then I came along and . . . I didn’t know. I didn’t realize he had such fantasies, and I didn’t know that my being here would awaken them.”

“Is this some kind of, like, dissociative personality disorder?” asked Jaye.

“Huh?” Rose frowned at her. “Oh, like . . Sybil or whatever? No, I think we’re talking to someone else, really someone else. A traveler?”

The man nodded. “I’m called . . . well, you couldn’t pronounce it. I flew my ship too close to the earth’s atmosphere and I was shot down . . .”

“So they’ve got a Torchwood in this reality as well.”

“I do not know. My physical form was too badly damaged to repair itself, so my essence sought another host. This . . . Edward Pennington came along, and I chose him. I didn’t know what he was like; I’m not certain he knew what he was like. He began to think he was going mad—“

“I know what that feels like,” Rose and Jaye blurted out almost simultaneously.

“—and that if he was mad, it would be okay to make the pictures in his head be real. It is horrible . . .”

“What can we do to help you?” asked Rose, urgently.

“There is nothing you can do for me. But . . . he must be stopped. You must . . . you must find a way to . . . “

“Surely you don’t expect us to . . . kill him?”

“Not you,” he said. “But someone must. Now be careful; he is about to wake up and I cannot control him. Keep your distance.”

“Keep our distance from a serial murderer? Not a problem.” Jaye was already backing away.

“Now,” said the man, and suddenly his eyes changed color. Instead of pale grey, they were dark brown. His expression was different as well. “Hello, darlings,” he said, in a much deeper voice. “Both of you come to play with me?”

“Run!” said Rose, grabbing Jaye’s hand, and they ran as quickly as they could, through the unfamiliar landscape, past old warehouses and at one point under a tunnel bridge, the darkness magnifying their fear. The man was always close behind, never quite gaining enough to catch them. 

But one of the turnings they took was a wrong one, and they found themselves at a dead end, up against a high brick wall as the man – Edward Pennington – came closer. 

“He’s got a knife!” whispered Jaye.

Rose was used to getting out of tight situations, but without a TARDIS and a sonic screwdriver, she was at a bit of a loss. “Nice knowing you, cousin Jaye.”

“Same here, cousin Rose.”

Pennington thrust with the knife as Rose twisted out of the way. Jaye took advantage of the distraction to slip around him, and head out of the yard. But she couldn’t see what to do for Rose, and didn’t want to leave her. 

She heard a scream.

“Rose!” she cried, and, unthinking, ran back towards the noise.

Pennington had pinned Rose to the ground; he was crouched over her, reaching back with his knife.

“No!” cried Jaye, and not thinking, she rushed towards them and threw herself on the killer, knocking him down. He grabbed her, and now the knife was against her throat.

Rose looked around desperately, searching for a weapon or an opportunity, and finding neither. 

There was a sound of squealing brakes, and heavy footfalls.

“Hands up!” came a voice. “We’re armed and you cannot escape.”

It was Gene Hunt. Greatly to her relief, Rose saw him, with Sam, and several other members of their unit. 

Pennington stepped forward, still clutching Jaye tightly. “I’ve got the girl, and if you take another step, she’s dead.”

Sam stepped forward, taking his place at Gene’s side. “Let her go. Let’s talk about this.”

“There’ll be no talking. There’s only one way this can end, and we both know it. I kill the girl, you kill me. The only question is what order.”

Crash! From behind Sam and Gene came a loud noise. Pennington started, and Jaye took the opportunity to slip out of his momentarily weakened grasp. She and Rose darted to the side, while Sam and Gene rushed forward. In a moment, Gene had the killer pinned to the ground, and uniformed officers were moving forward to handcuff him. 

Rose looked behind the crowd, and saw D.C. Puppydog . . . Chris, his name was . . . still trying to pick up the row of trash bins he’d plowed his car into. “Sorry,” he was saying. “Sorry,” as she and Jaye came closer.

“Chris, you’re a hero, is what you are.” 

“Saved my life,” Jaye added. “But, Rose, let’s never do this again, ‘kay?”

A moment later, Chris found himself being soundly hugged by Sam’s two pretty cousins. He blushed and sputtered a little bit, then gave himself up to enjoying the attention.

It was only later he learned how he’d become the inadvertent hero of the day.

* * *

Later, at the Railway Arms, Jaye was making her way resolutely through her fourth scotch-and-water. 

“Slow down, cuz.” Rose appeared behind her.

“Can you believe Nelson had never heard of a mojito? Or a kamikaze?”

“Welcome to England. Have some beer with a beer chaser.” Rose looked over at the dreadlocked barkeep. “I don’t think he’s really from Jamaica, either. Mickey’s grandma is, and his accent . . . I dunno. It keeps slipping or something.”

Over at the other side of the bar, Sam was sitting at a table with the Guv, Ray, Chris and Annie. 

“So, really, it’s a Tyler thing,” Gene was saying.

“What do you mean?”

“Your cousins, lovely girls that they are, are every bit as annoying and incapable of following simple instructions as you are.”

Sam shrugged. “Family characteristic, yeah, absolutely.”

A moment later, Rose tapped him on the shoulder. “Er, Sam? Jaye just received another . . . message.”

***

When Sam, Rose and Jaye arrived at the Oaks, some of the other parties were in full swing. The room in back, though, still marked reserved for the Tyler family reunion, was empty, but brightly lit. As it had been earlier, there was a lavish buffet set out, and the bar, though unattended, was well-stocked.

“Pity we couldn’t have brought the others back with us,” said Sam.

“So . . .” said Rose, “what now?”

Jaye was already pouring champagne. “A toast, and then we talk back through that door and see where we end up next.”

They clinked glasses. “Cheers!’

“Cheers!”

“Here’s . . . uh . . . whatever.”

They drained their glasses, set them on the bar, and stepped through the door.

“Umm . . .” said Rose, “I don’t think we’re in Manchester anymore.”

Sam looked around. “I don’t think we’re in 1973, anymore, either.”

“Guys?” said Jaye. “Have I had too much to drink, or . . . is that car hovering above the pavement?”

**Author's Note:**

> I think this was the first Life on Mars fic I ever wrote, approximately 2006. Around that time, I noticed that a lot of my favorite characters had the same last name. It has the usual problems with a crossover, mostly that the setup gets more attention than the actual plot, but on rereading it, I enjoyed it and thought it was worth archiving.
> 
> If you don't know Wonderfalls, you should. It's clever and charming and therefore was cancelled after half a season, but it's out on DVD. Jaye was played by Caroline Dhavernas (Dr. Alana Bloom on Hannibal), and as an added bonus, Lee Pace played her brother, Aaron. And if you're only here because you saw there was a new Rose Tyler story, Sam was played by John Simm (the Master during the David Tennant years). After I wrote the story, I read an interview with one of Life on Mars' creators who indicated that Sam was named after Rose (his child was a Doctor Who fan and suggested it), so actually I was kinda right . . . 
> 
> There's some Annie/Sam mutual crushage, but nothing actually going on. Past Sam/Maya, as well. Written between the two seasons of LoM, so reasonably canon compliant as of that time.


End file.
